Favorite episode?

HI everybody...I just joined.

I suppose one of my favorite episodes is the one where they talk about superpowers.

Oh, and for the record, I think flight is my superpower of choice.

jeff

Well, the replay of House on Loon Lake was wonderful on so many levels.

The most recent show on testosterone was absolutely riveting...and as a relatively sensitive male with a very strong sex drive, the segment with the lesbian getting testosterone injections was very resonant.

There was the episode on pimping. That was a lot of fun.

And I like pretty much any David Sedaris or Sarah Vowell piece. I have had some wicked crushes on Sarah.

Act Three of this episode is the best radio I've heard.

Description:

Act Three. Newfies. Reporter Chris Brookes had always thought the story was a joke. During World War II, a black sailor from the U.S. washed up nearly dead onshore in Newfoundland, and the white nurses--never having seen a black man--thought he was covered in oil and tried to scrub him clean. But when Brookes finally tracked the sailor down, decades later, it turned the whole thing was true. And the sailor said that sort of treatment was a lot nicer than what he'd been used to at the hands of whites down south. Brookes tells the incredible story of the sailor, Lanier Phillips, and how his experience in Newfoundland changed his life. (23 minutes)

this is best question for tribe newbie.

the segment that hooked me on TAL (co-workers shot eye-daggers when I guffawed uncontrollably at my desk) was "LITTLE MERMAID." i think that's what it's called.

it's the one where the Columbia students forwarded a phone msg from a suddenly foul-mouthed mothers and it became a cultural phenomenon. What made the episode was the bookending with the Josh character.

Other painfully funny ones: the disastrous production of Peter Pan; the squirrel; the guy who E-bayed his worthless tool(?)

Most poignant: the kid and nurse in the burn ward; valentine

"And I like pretty much any David Sedaris or Sarah Vowell piece."

Well of course. Santaland Diaries and Music Lessons are way up there.

What about "Fiasco!" That is one of my all time favorites. The segment on the peter pan production always makes me laugh until I cry. Also the episode about being stuck in limbo was really good - one of the TAL employees talked about her ordeal with an unresolved bill with MCI. I love how she lied and said the reason she couldn't have made a phone call on new years eve was because she was in the hospital giving birth...

Ohh I like the Super Powers one too. And since I dream about flying all the time, I have to go with flight as my power of choice.

Also the one with the Native American sisters following the trail of tears in their car.

My favorite episode was actually just on as a repeat. It is "My Experimental Phase." I loved the story about the Hasidic Jew who ended up becoming the singer of a popular underground NY band.

Hello, all ...

I've been a fan of TAL forever, so it's difficult to pick a favorite episode, but the "Godless America" episode from a couple of weeks ago was definitely one that I enjoyed very much. As one who has discovered that an agnostic / athiest point of view is far more parsimonious than the others i've encountered, this episode really resonated with me greatly.

Regards,

John

Falling You - exploring the beauty of voice and sound
www.magnatune.com/artists/falling_you

This American Life radio show
Episode 110 "Mapping"

www.thislife.org/pages/des...8/110.html

Act One: [4:00 to 12:30] [8.5 minutes]

Cartographer Denis Wood talks about the maps he's made of his own neighborhood, Boylan Heights, in Raleigh, North Carolina. He is creating maps that are more like novels describing everyday life.

a) map of the underground: man holes, gas lines, sewer lines

b) map of the overhead (power, telephone, cable) lines - ends of tiny capilaries connecting to individual homes - makes the neighborhood sound like a living organism

c) map of pools of light cast by each streetlight at night displayed on a black field

d) each traffic sign in the neighborhood drawn on a map - just traffic signs on a background - no streets. the density reveals those streets where strangers are expected to move through the environment in need of direction

e) map of Halloween pumpkins on porches

Photographed the pumpk faces and all you see are the eyes and mouths floating on the black background of the map. The streets are not drawn and instead are implicit in the lines and groupings of the pumpkins.

f) A related map shows how many times a resident at a given dwelling location was mentioned in the Boylan Heights newsletter in the previous 25 years. Found certain dwellings are frequently mentioned no matter who lives in them. Local "movers and shakers" pick homes in important locations with architectural or historical significance, etc.

"Look where these pumpkins are - they are exactly where people are mentioned in the newsletter."

"It's almost like you're writing a novel but with pure symbol - with maps."

"A map gets its meaning by *not* giving you all the information about everything but by selecting - this map is about this slice of the world"

The neighborhood is experienced by a collection of patterns of light and sound and smell and taste and communication with others (e.g., the light coming through the leaves in the trees in the summer.)

"Taking the premise of the map as a way of describing the world and then pointing it at things that we dont usually think of as being mappable."

"...involved with the search I have for the for the poetics of cartography."

"There isn't anything that doesnt have spacial dimension - and that spacial character is interesting."

"Selecting subjects for cartographic display are other than those that are typically displayed."

______________________________________________________

Denis Wood, author of the Power of Maps and
www.powells.com/cgi-bin/biblio

Seeing Through Maps: The Power of Images to Shape Our World View
www.powells.com/cgi-bin/biblio